1 of 1- Lorne
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Elton John says 72 is his best year yet
The Rocketman himself sat down exclusively with etalk at a Toronto pop-up celebrating the release of his new memoir, Me, which came out October 15 and has already generated a ton of headlines thanks to a peerless career spanning decades, credits ranging from Grammy-winning singer-songwriter to unofficial-but-undisputed best Oscar party host of all time, which means it would be rather hard to find something that he’s never done. Until now.
- aflem
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Re: Elton John says 72 is his best year yet
This is long but hopefully well worth the read. In his wonderful book, “Rocking America,” Rick Sklar – the programming genius who led WABC in New York to perhaps the highest regular ratings in radio history – outlines an incident involving Elton John.
He talks about Elton’s insistence on “squeezing as many singles as possible out of each album.” It didn’t really matter if some of the tunes were less than spectacular and he knew they wouldn’t sell. Two such songs were “I Feel Like A Bullet (In The Gun of Robert Ford)” and another cut on the same album called “Grow Some Funk Of Your Own.”
Knowing neither song was especially great, Elton John’s record company rep, a guy named Ray Dariano, devised a strategy that involved touting “Bullet” on some American stations, while insisting to others that “Funk” was going to break big all over the continent.
Sklar got wind of the scheme and knew both sides were losers, so he refused to put either on the great 77.
And then one day a giant rectangular cake arrived in his office, specially baked just for him, with the words, “GIVE ELTON A SHOT. BULLET IS A HIT!” boldly emblazoned in the icing. Other than distributing the confection to the staff, Sklar refused to bite.
The record tanked and Dariano was now faced with having to push “Funk” as the A-side, despite everyone knowing he’d tried to insist “Bullet” was the hit. Two weeks later, just before a scheduled music meeting that would decide which songs to add to the WABC playlist, a group of delivery men pushed past security and Sklar’s stunned secretary and placed a huge box on his desk, then left.
The P.D. explains what happened next.
“I was alone in the office,” he writes. “The staff had not yet arrived for the music meeting. I stared at the carton. I hesitated and then pulled off the cover. The bakery had outdone itself. This cake was even larger than the first. But there were no flowers, no ornaments, and no adornments. A simple inscription stretched across its full length.
“It read: DISREGARD PREVIOUS CAKE.”
In the end, neither song did very much on the charts, although “Bullet” did manage to reach #14 on Billboard.
And Ray Dariano, the A&R guy who exhausted every avenue to get one or both songs played? He eventually wound up as a disc jockey – on arch competitor WNBC.
Last edited by aflem (October 25, 2019 4:38 pm)
- Lorne
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Re: Elton John says 72 is his best year yet
That's a great story, but I think there are a couple of aspects of the situation worth mentioning. First, the two songs were issued as a double-A side. That could go with the strategy that Dariano employed, but the other aspect is that there was only other single from Rock Of The Westies, Island Girl. Considering how big a star Elton was, along with the fact that the album had gone straight to the top of the Billboard album chart, it would have been very surprising if one or two of the other songs on it hadn't also been released as singles. But perhaps there was some concern about how much hit potential each of these songs had on its own, and so that could explain the double-A side status.
Also, the chart run for the two songs on CHUM Toronto was rather interesting. First, Grow Some Funk charted on its own for two weeks. It was then joined by I Feel Like A Bullet for the next five weeks, with the combined listing spending three of those weeks at #5. Then Funk dropped off the chart entirely (which didn't normally happen with a song in the top 5), but Bullet continued going down the chart on its own for two more weeks. So both songs ended up spending a total of seven weeks on the chart.
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